Why Russia Helped Snowden: 5 Grievances Against the U.S.

Edward Snowden has left the Moscow airport, having been granted a year of temporary asylum by the Russian government. If you're wondering why Putin would antagonize the U.S. like this, allow us to catch you up on the reasons Moscow-Washington relations have been a bit frosty of late.

Many Americans cringed as Russia granted a year's worth of asylum to Edward Snowden, who is wanted in the United States on felonies related to his theft and disclosure of classified materials about the National Security Agency. The diplomatic fallout is yet to be seen, but a summit between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin may be cancelled.

So why did Putin do it? There are a host of domestic reasons: The move is supported by a majority of Russians, Putin needs a boost after massive protests against his government, and the drama is a welcome distraction from a sluggish Russian economy. And as always, it's important that Russia (suffering the trauma and insecurity of a former world power) appear to be a main-stage player in world affairs.

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But there is something else going on here. The nation has a list of grievances against the U.S.—choices by various administrations and Congress that alienated Russia and Putin in particular. This list could go back all the way to the fall of the Soviet Union and through the Clinton administration, which bombed Serbs despite Russia furious objections and expanded NATO to Russia's borders. Here, though, are the most recent slights, ones that make be coming home to roost this week.

Missile Defense in Europe

George W. Bush's administration enraged Russia when it announced it would place interceptors (missiles that shoot down other missiles) in Poland. The stated goal was to detect and destroy ballistic missiles shot from Iran, but the Russians saw it as a direct challenge. That's a big deal: The nation has been invaded with catastrophic results several times, so such territorial insecurity is understandable.

The missiles also appear to be stand-in for the real issue­—the West's reach into Russia's backyard. For its part,. Poland wanted a U.S. military presence to help safeguard its security. However, the U.S. is retreating from this plan. In March the Obama administration cancelled the final phase of the defense system, acquiescing to Russia's objections and snubbing the Poles. The dipolomatic currency this move generated may be squandered by the Snowden affair.

Extradition of Viktor Bout

The West calls Viktor Bout an arms dealer—the Merchant of Death. Russia calls him an air transport businessman—and a citizen. In 2008, U.S. agents arrested Bout in Thailand after a sting operation, during which he offered to sell a slew of weapons to Colombian rebels. Russia objected to Bout's extradition to America, claiming it was illegal. The U.S. ignored the objections, put Bout on trial, and threw away the key. His wife now operates a legal fund for Russian nationals on trial abroad—and there are dozens like him, Russian officials say. Just this week, Moscow erupted in rage at the seizure of an accused Russian hacker in the Dominican Republic who had been wanted by Interpol. He too was extradited to the United States without any word to the Russian government.

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"We think the fact that such practices are becoming a vicious tendency is absolutely unacceptable and inadmissible," one Russian official said. "We have repeatedly told the US that if there are demands for our citizens, it is necessary to send relevant requests to the Russian law enforcement authorities on the basis of the 1999-bilateral agreement on mutual legal assistance in criminal cases." If U.S. citizens were being shanghaied to Russia for trial, you can imagine (or hope) the U.S. State Department would have something to say about it.

Democracy Protests in Georgia

The Rose Revolution in 2003 was a marvelous thing—the first bloodless change of power in the nation's history. People took to the streets and a new flower of democracy bloomed. Amid the rejoicing came grand pronouncements: Georgia would join the European Union and NATO. No one really cared what Russia might think about all this, but the country has responded over the years. There was even a short war in 2008 in which Russia helped defeat the Georgians after they invaded the renegade province of South Ossetia, which claimed independence.. (Many analysts feel Georgia was goaded into it, with Russia baiting the trap.) A cease-fire ended that week-long conflict, but Georgia was rattled. "The United States and the European Union devoted considerable resources and diplomacy to encouraging their sometimes-halting progress and to fending off attempts by Russia to undermine it," the Washington Post says. These days the democracy seems to be faltering as government opponents are arrested and EU membership is on hold.

Libya and the Arab Spring

Russia has not done as good a job defending its interests in the Middle East as it has defending its neighborhood. Nothing demonstrates this better than the overthrow and killing of Libya strongman Muammar el-Gaddafi, a long-standing Russian ally. Putin called it a "repulsive, disgusting" execution. Russia didn't like the regime change in Iraq, either, but Saddam Hussein was not an ally and was an pariah in the Middle East. Qaddafi was different, and if Putin had been president instead of prime minister at the time the European and American militaries attacked, he probably would have used United Nations maneuvering to stop it.

The way the campaign was sold to the world—an approved no-fly zone that quickly morphed into a regime change— is also a sore spot for Putin. The experience contributed greatly to Russia's refusal to back away from supporting the Assad regime in Syria, where a civil war is raging (the Russians also have a port there they want to protect). Aleksei Pushkov, the head of Russia's parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, summed up the nation's attitude toward the American handling of the Arab Spring with a tweet: "Obama and Clinton are in shock? What did they expect – 'Democracy?' Even bigger surprises await them in Syria."

Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012

Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer working for a U.S. law firm in Russia when he discovered a tax fraud scheme. When he accused the officials he believed to be involved, he was the one who got arrested. He died in jail in 1999, before his trial even started. More than ten years later, Congress passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, which blacklists the Russian businessmen he accused as well as others the U.S. says are human right violators. Obama signed it into law last year.

This infuriated the Russian government, which responded by halting U.S. adoptions of Russian children and forming its own blacklist of U.S. businessmen. Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to expand the Magnitsky list, further agitating Putin. Moscow's view is that the Americans were cynically using human rights violations as a way to control Russian business. The Snowden case gave them the chance to cast the Americans as rights violators, taking some of the moral high ground away from the United States. The chance was too good for Putin to pass up.